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Selling more aftermarket parts and service is all about solving a problem for the fleets and owner-operators in your area. But a pile of big picture data about common CSA violations, causes of breakdowns/downtime, or even market share for each OEM isn’t really helpful.

Parts & Service distributors don’t need to know about what fleets in general are dealing with. They need to know what the fleet they are about to call is struggling with.

1. CSA Violations

The first thing distributors need to know is exactly what CSA violations are costing that fleet money. The value proposition that starts with “we can reduce your CSA violations” vs one that begins: “we noticed you have problems with CSA violations related to the lights on your trucks. We can service each of your power units every month and eliminate this problem for you.”

This is the type of data that can actually grow a business, instead of simply being interesting information.

2. Age of Trucks on the Road

Another vital piece of data is knowing the average age of the trucks a fleet has on the road. Older fleets will need more parts and service to avoid downtime, but that’s just the beginning. Let’s say you know that a certain fleet in your area has 150 trucks on the road of a certain make and model. You know these trucks need to have a certain part replaced after 100,000 miles. Because you are armed with this information, you can help this fleet prevent costly downtime by offering them preventative maintenance.

3. Target Fleets by Route

If you are a successful parts and service distributor, you probably already know about all the fleets that have a terminal in your immediate area. This is obviously a great place to start. But picture the hundreds or thousands of trucks that drive down the nearest highway every day. Do you have relationships with those fleets? Do you know what make of truck they are rolling and how old those units are?

Targeting fleets by the route they run can open up a whole new audience of potential customers.

The idea of spending your hard-earned money on something as abstract as data is probably intimidating. That is why any data product you look at should not just offer a large volume of data, but should be easy to use. This is where intelligent, actionable data can become a powerful tool that will grow your business, instead of just an industry term that doesn’t seem to apply to you.

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